Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Good news! After a period of relative silence following Brink’s splash-that-wasn’t, Splash Damage is back with another game about men shooting other men. However, not-so-good news: iOS, greedy devourer of worlds that it is, swallowed the poor thing whole. And while the Enemy Territory developer also has a free-to-play PC exclusive in the works for later this year, Rad Soldiers – as the iOS-bound strategy is known – looks like asynchronous XCOM wearing TF2′s pants. In other words: delightful. I wants it, precious. I wants it. Fortunately, Splash Damage told us that all hope isn’t lost.

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The UK Writers’ Guild Awards took place at the end of 2011 but the American guild like to time their ceremonies a little closer to the Oscars so that they can fall into Awards Season, which isn’t actually a season at all. You may remember that a man named Gillen was nominated for the UK award, along with Ed Stern whose script for Brink received a nod. The winners were the writers of Enslaved though and that doesn’t exist on PC so we neglected to mention its victory. A belated round of applause to Alex Garland and Tameem Antoniades. So, who has received a nomination from the American guild? Read on.

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Brink’s forthcoming clans and tournaments update is being celebrated by a free weekend on Steam, says Bethesda blog. The game is going to be free to play all weekend, this weekend. If you play for free this weekend you will also be able to purchase the game permanently for 75% off at any point during the weekend. That weekend apparently runs from “10 AM PST today… through Monday at 10 AM PST.” So that’s what’s happening with Brink this weekend.

Brink: a most curious beast indeed. I’m still not entirely sure what I make of it. While I wish it had done quite a few things a little differently, I’m heartened to see that it hasn’t been left to die: a forthcoming update will better turn it to the not-so-tender mercies of community-centric play. Clans and tournaments will be the focus of the patch – the kind of stuff that perhaps should have been there in the first place, but hindsight is 20/20, as my Dad so helpfully observes several hundred times a year.

You’ll be able to create a clan, recruit members, create some sort of no doubt nightmarishly ugly clan symbol, manage things via a dedicated profile page and, of course, wage war on other clans. They deserve it, the rotters.

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The Writers’ Guild of Great Britain – a rather different entity to the US Writers’ Guild – last week announced its nominees for assorted mediums’ most lauded writers. Included are the obscure likes of ‘television’, ‘theatre’, ‘books’ and ‘radio’, but fortunately Best Videogame keeps things relevant to our little corner of the internet. This is a prize given only to UK writers, so who do we think got a nod? Some clever people, that’s who.

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LATEST: Servers still broken, no idea why, working to fix.

It looks like Brink is having a free weekend!, so you might as well grab it and see what the fuss (or lack thereof) is about. I’ve put the RPS servers online, you can search for them in-game by searching for “Rock”. There’s a US server in Chicago and a UK one on London. I’ll post some events on the Steam group to get this rolling.

Jim: I’ll post about the Brink DLC… or did we post about it already?
John: I posted screenshots earlier in the week, saying when it was out.
Jim: Ok.
Jim: I will post that it is out and free for two weeks.
John: That’s just what your MUM would do.
Jim: She would, she’s top mental for free DLC.

As Alec brought to our attention on Friday, Brink’s first DLC, Agents Of Change, is due out on the 3rd August. That’s in two days time, calendar fans. Let’s celebrate this proximity with eleven screenshots of the runny, jumpy, shooty content. Except, er, without the runny, shooty or content. These are pics of the environments. Until the very last they somewhat forgot the players. But still, they’re very pretty. And pretty things distract me from the turmoil within.

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Well, we already knew full well that the first add-on content for Splash Damage’s bold team-based shooter Brink would be a freebie for a limited time, but what we didn’t know is when it would turn up. Of course, I’ve gone and ruined all the mystery by writing it in the headline, haven’t I? Man, I am an SEO expert’s worst nightmare. ‘Always ask a question if you want to soullessly farm traffic’, that’s the rule. Why don’t we do that? Why don’t we do it for every post? Why don’t you read on to find out? Or at least to find out what’s in Brink: Agents of Change? WHY DON’T YOU? WHY? DON’T YOU LOVE US? DON’T YOU WANT US TO HAVE PRECIOUS, PRECIOUS, HITS? WHYYYYYYYYYYYY?
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Splash Damage’s solid team-manshoot Brink has been out for a million years by now, of course. Except if you live in land of chaotic weather and fine tea known as the UK and like to buy your PC games via Steam, in which case it’s only just come out. Our inquiries into why it’s been missing from Brit-Steam for so long have only ever been met with no comments, but whatever the problem was (a disagreement with Steam ToCs? Something to do with keeping retailers happy? A mountain goat chewed an important cable? We can but speculate.)

Well, now it’s back. Why? We don’t know. Too late to mean much? We don’t know. All we know is that a) it’s back and b) it’s discounted by 25% for the time being, which means the price is an eminently reasonable £22.49 (which is still dearer than retail). Free DLC’s due soon, so maybe now’s a decent time to take its bytes and force them onto your hard drive if you haven’t already.

Brink DLC is coming soon. It is called Agents Of Change. That’s it up there in the image. The news about it is this: it will be free on Steam for the first two weeks, say Bethesda, and will appear at some point in July. As previously mentioned, the DLC will include “two all-new environments, five new player abilities, two new outfits, and two new weapon attachments.” (We asked about why it’s not on Steam in the UK, incidentally, and got a “no comment”. It seems to still be missing, so that remains an oddity.)

Anyway, Splash Damage are reportedly still at work on new balancing changes for weapons, and other patch stuff to improve the game. I might knock up an RPS game of this at the weekend, if anyone fancies it. Join the Steam group for clever notifications!